Meet Michele Trent of Remembered Well

Today we’d like to introduce you to Michele Trent.

Michele, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
Like many of us, my life has been a winding path full of adjustments and unexpected turns. It’s as I look back that it makes the most sense and this seems true for most people. A majority of my career was spent as a marketer.  I’ve worked for a variety of organizations, non-profit, for profit, and even a couple of government entities. Marketing may have been what I knew but it wasn’t my purpose. I was from a family filled with entrepreneurs and yet that never seemed to be my bent. Or maybe it’s that I hadn’t found a business idea that filled me with enough passion to make the leap to start out on my own. That is until one event rocked my world.

As a typical middle-class kid from a tight-knit family, my parents were whom I turned to for guidance, advice, and the occasional kick in the pants. I could never have envisioned a world without one of them because they’d always been there. You might say I took it for granted as many of us do. That changed with one phone call. The call was from my mom telling me that the doctors from the Mayo Clinic wanted us to assemble in my dad’s room that afternoon. My dad was in the hospital again. This had become a regular occurrence during his year’s long battle with  cancer. His was a kind that had no cure. The cancer diagnosis was shocking at first. Of course. But as he battled, underwent various treatment, and time passed, it just became this unfortunate “thing” that he dealt with. Life went on. It seemed like there were numerous options and new exciting treatment protocols coming out every day. We had hope and he had perseverance. Then all of a sudden, our tentative alliance with this “thing” crumbled. The doctors told us there was nothing more they could do and that my dad would die in a matter of days.

When you face news like that, desperation grips you. How do you save a piece of the person you love so much? A person who has shaped you? A person you want all generations of your family to know. My husband suggested recording my dad and preserving his stories so that his voice would live on. My dad was excited for the opportunity. He really wanted to live and using his final days to share his memories meant the world to him. And, it meant the world to me. Embarrassingly, I learned more about my dad in his final two weeks of life than I had my entire life. The experience was precious and the stories recorded are priceless. I can still hear the sound of my dad’s voice even though he passed away many years ago. After that experience, my work as a marketer lost its luster. I was ready to start a business and I knew exactly what I wanted to do. I wanted to record people sharing their life stories. I wanted to help others live on, to capture wisdom, and save family legacy. Preserving priceless family history and memories became my passion. In January of 2017, I started Remembered Well.

Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
It has not been the smoothest of roads but what of value ever is? I’ve learned that the entrepreneurial path is a rollercoaster. In the beginning, I was so confident. When I told people what I was going to do, they loved the idea. However, there is a big gap between showing interest and actually commissioning a story recording. I was sure that upon hearing my story, others would recognize the value, consider their own situation, and pursue a recording right away. In some instances, that is true and in many others, that’s just not the case. The idea of preserving family stories and memories is well received. The problem is timing. Most people think they’ll do it “someday.” Yet someday is a fickle day and so easily becomes “never”. Once someone you love passes away, there’s no going back. You can’t recreate that opportunity. You can remember him or her, you can tell stories about the person, but you will never truly know his or her story because you didn’t live it. Stories are unique to each person. They live in the heart and mind and go with us when we leave this Earth. That is unless we do something to share those stories and to preserve them on a device that sits outside ourselves. If we do that, those stories (and a piece of us) live on forever.

One thing I hear often from people is, “I wish I would have.” There is a desire to know the stories of those who have passed and yet in the day-to-day busyness of life, we all think we have time to get them. I’m guilty of this as well. Life is precious and can turn on a dime. My hope is to share my own story as a way of encouraging others to save the wisdom and memories of their loved ones. This shouldn’t be an end of life consideration but rather a way to honor the people we love. I wish I had recorded my dad sooner. If I had done so, I would have known more about him and felt more connected to him while he was alive. There’s no need to wait. Today is a very good day to start a story preservation project.

Please tell us about Remembered Well.
My business is a boutique story recording company. We partner with families to create a piece of art. Every audio recording is unique. The memories are from the perspective of the storyteller as told by the storyteller. I come with all of the questions and the storyteller has lived all of the answers. Through a guided conversation, I tease out important detail. The finished product is a digital narrative of a portion of the storyteller’s life. The memories are extraordinary. Recordings are filled with adventure, love, heartache, learning, wisdom, and fun. The best part is hearing the sound of your loved one. No one uses phrases as they do, laughs like them, or has the same speech pattern. There is just something incredibly sweet about the sound of a person’s voice. This is especially true after someone passes away.

Families are connected through storytelling. When children listen to the stories of their parents, they get to learn even more about the people they thought they knew and  parents get to feel special and acknowledged by their children and grandchildren. It’s a human need to feel significant. We all want to know that we matter in some way. When someone is gifted a storytelling session, he or she is tangibly shown that they matter. That they are important and that their story is worthy of living on and impacting future generations.

Pricing:

• Every project is unique. We’ll work within your budget. Prices start at $375 for a two hour recording package.
• To find our more, you can schedule a free 30-minute Story Strategy Call by visiting www.RememberedWell.com

Contact Info:

• Phone: 623-696-6998
• Email: michele@rememberedwell.com
• Instagram: @rememberedwellstories
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/RememberedWell

Image Credit:
Glenn Mire, Mire Images Photography

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