There may be no greater influence on us than our families. Our families can set us on a road to success with a deep sense of love and belonging-as I hope yours did for you-or they can cripple us and make our journey in life harder. Not to mention all manner of things in between. Mostly, our families are well-meaning and perhaps good enough, not causing any real harm. Whatever we experienced growing up, we inherit patterns of behavior and personality traits that we carry with us our entire lives, which can be like a hidden legacy. We may not even realize where these traits originated or how they were passed on from generation to generation. But they often have a profound effect on our development and how our life has played out. These patterns do not get documented on a typical family tree program. But they don’t have to be left out. And, in fact, they may offer some of the most interesting and vital information your family has to pass on to future generations.

Families teach us how to be members of society. They teach us how to operate in the world, as well as how to relate to others. By good or not-so-good example, our families teach us how to be a friend, community member, a spouse and a parent. They teach us work ethics, how to care. They teach us what it means to be religious and spiritual-or not. Sometimes we learn attitudes such as whether to approach the world in a positive or negative way. For example, were you taught that the world was out to help you or out to get you? Or maybe a little of both? Our family of origin can influence how we see the world outside of our family and how we react to it. They teach us how to support or deny our gifts, wishes, dreams, circumstances. And whether we see family members frequently or if we haven’t been in contact with them for decades, they’re always there-inside us. We are carrying them into the future.

That’s why an enhanced family tree program, in additional to a standard genealogical chart, can help you document your family in a way that your grandchildren and great grandchildren will thank you for. The next generation of family tree programs will find ways to document the strengths in a family, the challenges, as well as the gifts and legacies. An enhanced family tree program will give you an up close and personal view of your family and document emotional and intellectual inheritances. If you want to create a more in-depth family tree, you might want to consider creating a type of family time capsule that includes things like a genogram (a psychological family tree), an extensive family chronology, a collection of family stories, as well as well-documented photographs and letters to your descendents. You want to leave a legacy that honors your family and is rich with descriptions of who your family was and continues to be.

Author Bio: Susan Gabriel, M.Ed, created the Family Time Capsule, a unique multimedia program which provides your parents & honored elder family members, as well as the family historians and storytellers in your family, a comprehensive & easy way to document their legacy. http://www.YourFamilyTimeCapsule.com

Category: Family Concerns
Keywords: family tree programs, legacy, family tree, genogram