Tell Rosa your story. She listens, she remembers, and it stays yours.

For now, on the free trial: you talk with Rosa for up to an hour about when you were small, with just your voice — no camera. Afterwards she writes it up as the first chapter of your book, which you keep as a PDF. Everything below is what a full story adds, if you carry on.

You start by talking to Rosa. If you’re not sure what you want to do, just say so — she’ll explain the options out loud. When you’re ready to record, she’ll ask whether you’d like the camera on or just your voice, and guide you through it. When you’d rather plan first, she’ll help you sketch chapters before you commit to recording one. When you want to share a photograph of someone you’re talking about, you can take a picture with your phone or email it to her, and she’ll bring it into the conversation.

Every finished video is yours. We never share it on our own. You choose the people in your family who can watch it and read your chapters — each signs in with their own email — and for a funeral or a gathering you can make a link that you can turn off at any time. A story you pay for is kept online rather than downloaded, and a copy of everything is yours whenever you ask.

Every finished recording, photo, and note stays until you ask Rosa to remove it — one sentence (“please delete that last recording”) is enough. Two things do tidy themselves away. If you record a chapter twice and choose which take to keep, the other take goes after seven days (you can change your mind any time before then). And the raw sound or video of a conversation you walked away from — left untouched for a week and never saved as a recording — is deleted a month after that; what you said is kept, in its transcript and in everything it added to your story and your book. If you’d rather close your account here, you can ask her to do that too.

Whatever is still sitting in your account isn’t something your family can ask us for later — so share your story with them while you’re well, and tell someone it exists. A recording nobody knows about can’t be found. If you’d like a copy of everything to keep somewhere of your own, ask us and we’ll send it.

A small fixed opening (your name, who you’re recording for) and then an unfolding conversation. Rosa is warm and curious — not a therapist and not a journalist. She asks one thing at a time, listens carefully, and follows what you actually said.

If you come back for a second sitting, Rosa picks up where she left off — the family names you mentioned, the places that mattered, the stories you’ve already covered. You don’t have to re-introduce yourself.

During a recording on camera, Rosa glances at how you look and passes on a quiet note if something’s distracting in the final picture — bright light behind you, microphone covering your chin, that sort of thing. She stays out of the way otherwise.

Every interview also produces the words themselves, in three shapes: a plain text transcript, a printable keepsake laid out like a small book — cover photo, chapters, one button to print it or save it as a PDF — and a family kit that keeps the whole conversation on one page beside the recording. Ask Rosa for any of them, or find them next to each recording. The words outlive the recording: even if you delete it, its transcript stays.

You can take a picture with your phone (or pick one from your photo library) and Rosa will bring it into the conversation — she might ask who that is, or where it was taken. If you’d rather email pictures in, ask her for your personal email-in address; anything you send there comes straight back to her. If you take a picture of an old photograph, she’ll do her best to crop out the table and the room around it so just the photograph is left.

You don’t have to do this alone. If a relative or friend wants to sit with you while you record, send them this invite — it opens your email with everything ready to go.

Setting this up for a parent? Here’s a short guide for families.