They say all good things must come to an end and, sadly, that includes MyRetrospect.com. Retrospect Media, Inc. will cease operations as of December 31, 2018.
It has been our joy and privilege to host your stories—more than 900 of them—on MyRetrospect.com. But even beyond sharing these slices of our lives, it has been a marvel to see a true community develop here. Many of us have never met yet we actually care about each other. We know meaningful details of each other’s lives, families, and histories, and have vicariously experienced each other’s triumphs and sorrows.
Each time you have clicked Publish on a story, it’s taken courage to put yourself out there. The Internet is not always a friendly place to do that, and yet you’ve done it, time and again, because we all have a need to be heard. And each time you have responded to others’ stories with a Like or positive comment, you have validated that need. It’s been an honor to provide a safe place for you to do this, and for this community to grow.
Ever since our alpha site went live on September 4, 2015, MyRetrospect.com has been a labor of love for us. Yet life has a way of telling us it’s time to move on. Many of the stories on this site recall the time when we felt like we had all the time in the world, but as baby boomers we no longer have that luxury, and in fact we never did. This will help us create space in our lives to fulfill our remaining goals and dreams.
We’ll keep the Retrospect website live until the end of February 2019 so that others can read the stories that are already here. However, we will not post new prompts or accept new stories after December 31, 2018.
We know your stories are precious. If you want to print or save them onto your computer, go to your profile and click the new button labeled Print My Stories. Retrospect will compile up to ten of your stories onto a web page. Use your browser’s File > Print command to print them or save them in a PDF file. If you have more than ten, just repeat the process. See our help page for further details.
We’re grateful to you, our readers and (especially) our writers, for sharing this journey with us. We hope the bonds we’ve forged here will live on, and encourage you to keep thinking back and sharing your stories forward. You can find—and potentially contribute—true personal stories in two of our favorite magazines, The Sun and Midcentury Modern. (The latter, like MyRetrospect.com, is aimed at baby boomers.)
As we said on our About page, we are a storytelling species. It is through stories that we remember, learn, and make sense of our world and, ultimately, our lives.
Take care. We wish you long life, good health, and memorable stories.
John & Patti
