ABOUT US

The story of the Testament Society begins with a deeply personal journey of connection, discovery, and a dream that had been waiting for decades to take shape.  My part of that story actually began long before I knew anything about it, when my birth parents met in college.  Unprepared for an unexpected pregnancy, they made the difficult decision to place me for adoption.  They kept the pregnancy a secret, and I was adopted by a family who had longed for a daughter.

I grew up in a happy home with two older and two younger brothers.  My childhood was rich with love and laughter, although I grew up without the extended family of aunts, uncles, and cousins that many people know.  I wondered about my biological family, but for most of my life they remained simply people I knew existed somewhere.

By the time I was fifty-five, my children were grown and both of my adoptive parents had died.  My husband of more than thirty years gave me an online DNA test as a gift, simply thinking I might enjoy learning more about where I came from.  The results led me to my birth parents, and to several surprises.  I learned that they had later married each other and were still together.  I also discovered that although both my birth parents and adoptive parents were originally from Indiana, the two families had independently moved across the country to Washington State at different times.  My birth parents had eventually settled just fifteen minutes from the home where I had grown up.  Somehow, without ever knowing it, our lives had crossed paths again.

Naturally, my first questions were about my family.  I wanted to know who these people were and where I came from.  In response, my birth mother sent me two books - Personal Testaments my father had created from interviews with my paternal grandmother and my maternal grandfather.  My father had gathered and organized their words, and my mother had painstakingly edited the material and found a way to self-publish the Testaments as beautiful hardcover books.  Over the years, they have completed three Testaments in all, and none of them would have been possible without my mother's help.

 But the books did not arrive alone.  With them came a letter from my father introducing himself to me and telling me about a dream he had carried for much of his life: the creation of a Testament Society.  The forewords he had written for the two books explained more about his vision.  He imagined people intentionally reflecting on what their lives had taught them, preserving those reflections in Personal Testaments, and passing what they had learned to generations that would come after them.  His vision was larger than preserving family memories.  He believed a Testament could allow an ordinary person to leave something of value not only to family, but to people and generations the author would never know.  So before I knew very much about my birth father - before I knew his history, his personality, or even what our relationship might become - I knew that he had a dream. 

The two books also allowed me to experience the purpose of that dream personally before I had spent much time thinking about it intellectually.  I had never known either of the grandparents whose words they contained.  I could not sit across from them and ask about their lives.  But because my birth parents had preserved their words, I could hear something of who they had been in their own words.  The Testaments gave me access to people in my family whom I had discovered too late to know.

In reconnecting with my birth family, I gained something else I had never imagined.  Suddenly there were many aunts and uncles and even more nieces, nephews, and cousins, all of whom welcomed me into their lives.  But those Testaments gave me something different.  They allowed people who were already gone to become part of that discovery too.

Most of my adult life has been spent as the owner and director of a children's summer camp.  An underlying theme of my work with young people has always been encouraging them to recognize that they can help shape the direction of their lives, but that it begins with identifying a dream.  My opening campfire talk has always included the importance of dreaming, picturing the steps it will take to reach that dream, and then taking those steps.

Then I met my birth father and learned that he had been carrying his own dream for decades.

As a business owner with experience taking ideas and turning them into working programs, I wanted to help do the same thing for him.  The more we talked about the Testament Society, the more his ideas developed, and I wanted to create a place where those ideas could be gathered and shared with other people.  This website is one of the first steps toward doing that.

The Testament Society is my father's dream.  My role is to help him give that dream form and, hopefully, help make it a reality.

The Testament Society is still at the beginning.  Much of what you see on this website is a vision of what it could become rather than a description of a finished organization.  We are developing ideas for helping people create their own Testaments, for beginning reflection earlier in life through Pre-Testamental Reflection Logs, for providing assistance through Testament Guides, and for eventually creating a permanent Testament Library where Testaments can be preserved according to the wishes of their authors.

The vision extends beyond simply preserving the documents.  A Reading Record could allow future generations to see who encountered a Testament before them.  Testamentarians could read Testaments with particular care and create thoughtful commentary that helps future readers notice connections, questions, and ideas they might otherwise miss.  Over time, Testaments written by people who never knew one another could become connected through common experiences, discoveries, disagreements, and questions.

These ideas are still developing.  This website gives us a place to explain them, think through them, invite others into the conversation, and begin discovering what would be required to turn my father's vision into something lasting.

For me, the value of preserving a person's reflections is no longer theoretical.  I know what it is like to discover members of my family after they are already gone and wish I could ask them questions.  I also know what it is like to receive something they left behind that allows me to know them in a way I otherwise never could.

Most of us inherit photographs, names, dates, possessions, and stories about the people who came before us.  Far less often do we inherit the opportunity to hear those people explain for themselves what they thought, what they learned, what changed them, what they regretted, what they believed, what they questioned, and what they hoped someone coming after them might understand.

My father's dream asks us to imagine making that opportunity intentional.  Instead of hoping that someone's letters survive, that their stories continue to be told accurately, or that someone recognizes the importance of a box of papers before throwing it away, what if people deliberately considered what they had learned and what they wanted to leave behind?  And what if we did not wait until the end of life to begin asking those questions?

That is the dream my father shared with me.  I want to help him make it a reality.

The Testament Society began as one man's dream, but bringing that dream to life will require other people.  Some may create their own Testaments or preserve Testaments that already exist within their families.  Some may become Testament Guides or Testamentarians.  Others may help us think through the Library, develop resources, identify problems we have not considered, or contribute skills and ideas that help move the Society from vision toward reality.

We would especially like to hear from families who already have traditions of preserving the reflections, life lessons, memories, or writings of previous generations.  What have you preserved?  How has it affected the people who came afterward?  What do you wish someone in your family had left behind?

Our story began with a dream my father carried for decades, three Testaments my birth parents created together, and a daughter who arrived fifty-five years into the story.  We are just beginning to see where that dream can go.