Life Books

Life Books
A daunting task for most, me included. Sometimes due to the ambiguous nature of the story to tell, sometimes lack of information, saddness, time, sometimes it is the intimidation of scrapbooking. Well, there is NO right way to do a life book for your child.  The thing is to get something into their hands. Polished or not, they will know the love.

I have finished two digital life books for my boys. I am making a template of each available in case you want to fill in something that is pretty easy. Or you can just take a look to get ideas for making one on your own. One highlights the Amhara culture (also has page on home births), the other the Tigray culture (also has page for birth hospital information). The pages are interchangeable and you may want to look at both. They do have a distinctly Christian theme.  All of the pictures are just from free online sources and the script in many places is cut and paste from travel sites and Wikipedia, etc...  I like the digital idea because it can be recreated if needed. It can be expanded and changed if need be. I put it in a digital scrapbook book with plastic pages/top insert, which I bought at Jo-Ann's craft store. For the front and back cover you can get the front and back pages printed on huge sticker sheets and stick them on. :) You can access the PDF files below. I am working on a Publisher or Word file that can be downloaded as well.

When You Were Born in Ethiopia, Amhara culture version PDF
When You Were Born in Ethiopia, Amhara culture version  Publisher-not yet up
When You Were Born in Ethiopia, Tigray culture version PDF
When You Were Born in Ethiopia, Tigray culture version Publisher-not yet up


 To fill out the pages if you don't really know what to put on them, I suggest the following book.

Before You Were Mine Discovering your adopted child's life story by Susan TeBos and Carissa Woodwyk
This is an awesome book and it will guide you through putting together a life book for your child.  It is often hard to come up with something for a child you have no information on. This book has good ideas for extrapolating and guessing at circumstances and such from what you do have. Of course you want to tell your child that it is a guess when it is and fact when it is. This book is from a Christian perspective and gives lots of verses and ideas for pulling it all together for your child with the love and care of God for him or her as central theme. I like that.

If you are not too interested in a Christian theme there are many other options.
I hear this one is really good too, although I have not read it. I think she is one of the forefront authors on this topic and many other books quote her, including the above book.
Life Books: creating a treasure for your adopted child by Beth O'Malley

Have fun creating a treasure of memory for your child.