August 21 2017

By: Jackie Hook
Monday, August 21, 2017

What is your legacy? It is defined as a gift of property, especially personal property, and as money, by will or by bequest. It is also defined as anything handed down from the past, as from an ancestor or predecessor. In a research study, the concept of legacy is described as having four pillars:

  1. Values and life lessons
  2. Instructions and wishes to be fulfilled
  3. Personal possessions of emotional value
  4. Financial assets and real estate

What the researchers found is that baby boomers and their parents are more concerned about their legacy of family stories then they are about their material possessions and money.

A legacy of family stories is also important to the resiliency of young people, and a study conducted by Drs. Marshall Duke and Robin Fivush involved asking adolescents twenty questions about their family history. They found that children who heard more family stories had higher self-esteem, lower levels of anxiety, fewer behavioral problems, better outcomes in difficult situations, better family functioning, and greater beliefs in their ability to affect their own lives.

It turns out that the practice of assessing your legacy by reviewing your life can also enhance your mental health. Therapists sometimes use a practice called life review therapy to help patients.

                                                                            (First printed in the July 26 Centre County Gazette)

Leave a comment
Name*:
Email:
Comment*:

Comments

Please wait

Previous Posts

December 4 2023

This month’s theme is “Dare! Silence.” Silence is very important throughout our lives, especially on our grief journeys. Silence can be intimidating, and we often try to fill it when we encounter i...

November 27 2023

To close this month, please read Anne Hillman’s poem, “We Look With Uncertainty” as you notice “something new is being born in” you while making new treasured memories. We look with uncertainty be...

November 20 2023

My favorite holidays is Thanksgiving. In terms of the meanings behind other holidays, I’m all in. But I can do without their hype and commercialization. So as we approach the Thanksgiving holiday, ...

November 13 2023

As I was writing this month’s posts about our theme of “Memories Become Treasures,” the song “Landslide” by Fleetwood Mac started to play. When our youngest child went off to college, this song mad...

November 6 2023

This month’s theme is “Memories Become Treasures.” In a recent grief education and support group I was leading we talked about looking at old photographs of deceased loved ones and how those pictur...

October 30 2023

To close out this month, read these words of poet John O'Donohue: The dead are not distant or absent. They are alongside us. When we lose someone to death, we lose their physical image and presenc...

October 23 2023

In the book, A Grief Observed, C.S. Lewis wrote: “And suddenly at the very moment when, so far, I mourned H. least, I remembered her best. Indeed it was something (almost) better than memory; an i...

October 16 2023

In connection with our theme, “I Am Gone but Very Near,” I’ve recently learned that in the Aramaic language, the word death means “existing elsewhere.” For some people, the death of a loved one mea...

October 9 2023

Nathasha Wagner once said, "I had to learn to have a relationship with someone who wasn’t there anymore." That can feel like an impossible feat, but grief shows us how. When listening to grief, mou...

October 2 2023

Welcome to this month’s theme of “I Am Gone but Very Near.” We all have our own beliefs about what happens after we die. Some of us believe in Heaven, others in reincarnation, still others in no af...