Musings from a friend

With so many people using today to reflect back on a very tragic time in our history, I decided to share with you all a piece that my SS friend wrote. She has truely described why family is so important and why my pictures and scrapbooks are so important to me. Excerts from her post are listed in quotes below.

"Where were you on September 11th 2001? On 9/11 I had a Creative Memories business that was 14 days new. I hadn’t even taught my first Home Class, as our presentation was called back then. The world had stopped still in the wake of this awful tragedy. I stopped still. I kept my eyes on the news day and night. Days after the tragedy, people were walking aimlessly around ground zero and there was a common thread. Pictures. People held up pictures of their husbands, wives, fathers, mothers, sons, daughters, brothers, sisters, friends, coworkers. They were looking for their loved one. Holding pictures up to the news cameras in hopes that someone in the audience had seen the person in the picture and that somehow they might be reunited. They grasped onto those pictures as if the picture was the individual themselves. Pictures. People tearfully holding up pictures pleading to the camera “Have you seen this person?” Weeks later, the pictures turned from a tool to help locate someone into a way to memorialize that same person. Pictures were left with flowers and messages at ground zero. It occurred to me that becoming a Creative Memories Consultant, a mere 14 days earlier, was important. Pictures are important. The stories behind the pictures are just as important.

I was already a “scrapbooker” with cute pages of my little boy, just 15 months old. I created fun pages of me and my husband in the early years of our marriage. Suddenly, those pages were so much more valuable and as I would create future pages, I’d always be thinking that these albums will be here long after I’m gone. I prayed that I would be around to enjoy the moments with my family a long time from now, but if something should happen to me, that I’ve shared my feelings in my albums. They’d know how important they were to me. They’d have an idea of who I was as a person, a wife, a mother, a daughter, a friend. They would know who I loved and why I loved them so much. I had hoped that the families of the victims of 9/11 had such a treasure of their loved one, either created by the loved one or about the loved one.

When I started my business on August 27, 2001, I thought it will be fun and cute to teach people to make albums and I could make a little money doing something I already enjoyed. After September 11, 2001, I thought differently. I KNEW then that people and families NEED these albums and my resolve grew. They always needed these albums, just as my family needs these albums, but 9/11 changed my whole perspective. My business had an amazing purpose. Suddenly, I “got” the Creative Memories Mission. To preserve the past, enrich the present and inspire hope for the future. I get it! I pray that the hundreds of albums that have been created as a result of my sharing Creative Memories with others will not be valued as the result of a tragedy. I can rest in the knowledge that when the people I’ve helped create albums’ time on earth has come to a close, for whatever reason, that they’ve left a story behind. Maybe not the whole story. Maybe just a glimpse. Maybe it was a love story about their husband. Maybe it was a love story about their children. Maybe it was a story about themselves. Whatever it is, Creative Memories has helped me impact lives for the better and I am so grateful for that.


If you know me as a friend, a family member, one of my Creative Memories customers, one of my Creative Memories team members, I wanted to share this with you. This is where I am coming from when I offer to help you make albums. This is where I am coming from when I’ve invited you to my house to work on your albums. This is where I am coming from when I encourage you as a Consultant to keep helping others to create albums. This is where I am coming from when you look at me funny when I tell you I was up all night scrapbooking. I love what I do as a scrapbooker and as a Consultant. I just wanted to give you a little insight as to where some of that passion and resolve comes from."