My New Zealand grandmother left us all a legacy that still guides us more than 50 years after her death. For decades she kept a scrapbook of her pithy ‘letters to the editor’, poems that expressed her longing for England, the homeland of her parents, and little quotes that had sustained her while my grandfather was fighting in the trenches in France during WWI.

I was only 10 when my grandmother died but because of her scrapbook I feel the grown-up in me knows the grown-up in her. Fifty years on her beautiful spirit is still there in the pages of her scrapbook, guiding and loving us in ways that transcend time.

Scrapbooks speak to future generations about who we are and what we stand for. More than that, in my experience, they carry love out across the generations to family members their author will never meet in person. As I watch my adult sons, who of course never knew her, pour over her scrapbook I know there can be no greater gift!

What has been your experience with scrapbooks in your family across the generations?