Family Stories · From $279/mo
Their stories. Theirs to tell, yours to keep.
Weekly calls with your parent or grandparent. We write down everything they tell us.
The Christmas your grandfather got the bicycle. The job your grandmother walked out of in 1962. The way your dad’s mom kept the books for the family business through the recession.
You meant to get the stories down. Then a year goes by, then five.
What we actually do
A warm caller. A patient cadence. Your parent does the talking.
A dedicated assistant calls your parent or grandparent on a schedule that works for them. They ask the questions that get the stories out, in the order that feels natural. They write everything up afterwards.
You end up with a real archive: childhood, work, family, the small ordinary things that turn out to be the ones you wanted most. Calls are warm and never rushed. Your relative gets to enjoy them as much as you do.
From a recent client archive · redacted
A sample page.
The bakery on Powell Street.
Mom worked behind the counter at Lipinski’s from the time she was twelve, weekends, six in the morning until close. She doesn’t remember anyone teaching her to make the dough. She just watched her grandmother do it once and then knew.
“You don’t measure flour. You watch it. You learn what the bowl wants. Mrs. Lipinski never wrote anything down and she fed half of South Philly for thirty-eight years.”
The bakery closed in 1979 when Mr. Lipinski died. Mom kept the apron. We never knew until this call.
How the calls start. The first six months.
A real schedule, not a sales deck.
Week 1
A fit call with you. An intro call with them.
Fifteen minutes with you to learn the basics: who they are, what they like to talk about, what to never bring up, how they like to be called. Then a warm intro call with them, no recording, no agenda. They meet the person before they trust the person.
Week 2-4
The first three real calls.
Same time every week, 30 to 60 minutes, whatever feels right to them. Open prompts the first call. Childhood the second. Wherever it goes from there. Transcribed and saved. You get a short note after each one so you know how they sounded.
Month 2
First written archive entry in your inbox.
A 2-to-4-page edit of the strongest moments so far. In their voice, not ours. With dates and places where we have them. Photo prompts begin: you send a picture, the next call opens with the story behind it.
Month 6
First printable volume on your shelf.
A bound copy of what’s been gathered: chapters, photos, a few of their original phrases preserved exactly. Same assistant, still calling weekly. The archive keeps growing as long as you want it to.
From families
After the first six months.
“Three months in, we have 47 pages of my dad’s life in his own words. He’s never sounded more like himself on the phone. My kids are going to know him in a way I almost did not get to.”
[First Last] · For her father · [Mon YYYY]
“She remembers everything we have ever told her. The school in Krakow. The cousins. The dog they had in 1971. We forget. She does not. The book that came out of those calls is the most valuable thing in our house.”
[First Last] · For her mother · [Mon YYYY]
Your account manager
A dedicated account manager. The person you actually call.
Every account has its own account manager, separate from your dedicated assistant. They run the kickoff, own the match, and are the person you reach if something needs to be rematched, escalated, or just sanity-checked. Every assignment has a quality bar. You aren't the one chasing it.
Same person, every month. No round-robin queue. No swapping out the contact after onboarding. The match you meet on day one is the match running the work on day two hundred.
Common worries
The questions families ask.
What if my parent doesn’t want to be on camera or recorded?
Calls are phone-only by default, no video, no recording unless you specifically ask. Your assistant takes notes during the call and writes a clean narrative afterwards. Many of our clients’ parents prefer not knowing it’s being written down. They’re just talking to someone who’s interested.
How do you make sure they actually open up?
Time. The first call is just hello and finding common ground. By call three or four, your parent is telling stories they probably haven’t told anyone in years. Same caller every time helps. So does the patience to let silences happen and follow the threads instead of running through a script.
What if they’re losing memory or going through grief?
Your assistant is briefed on this in your initial fit call. We’re warm and gentle, never pushing on what’s painful, and we’ll always defer to whoever you tell us has the final say (you, a spouse, a sibling). If a topic gets hard, we move on. If your parent forgets what we covered last week, we don’t make them feel it.
Who else can read the archive?
Just you, by default. You can share access with siblings, kids, or anyone you choose. The archive is private and confidential, and access is revocable. Your parent’s stories belong to your family, not to us.
How long does this typically go on?
For as long as you’d like. Most families settle into a weekly rhythm and run it for a year or more. Some stop after six months with a finished volume; some keep going indefinitely because the calls themselves have become the thing your parent looks forward to.
What if my parent passes away before we finish?
The archive is yours. We’ll deliver everything we have, edited and bound the way you want it. Some families keep the unedited transcripts too. We’ve helped families turn three calls into something they treasure; we’ve helped families turn fifty calls into a printed memoir. There’s no minimum.
The quickest path
Book a 20-minute intake.
Talk to a real person first. Bring what's on your plate, the tools you're already using, and where it's breaking. You leave with a scope, a price, and the name of your match, or the honest answer that this isn't a fit.
No sales pressure. We say if it's not a fit.
Prefer to write it out
Send the details. One business day to reply.
Drop the basics. We come back inside one business day with a match and a scope.
Reply within one business day · Your details stay private · No sales pressure
Start the calls this month.
Fifteen minutes with us. The first warm call with your parent inside two weeks. The first written entry in your inbox before the month is out.