Still being built. Have a look around — nothing you enter is kept yet. Tell me when it’s ready

The Light We KeepSign in
The family that started it

Built by one family, for families like it.

I started this because of a conversation I did not have.

There are people I never got the chance to ask. A whole line of them, gone before I thought to ask what they knew.

What is left is secondhand — names, dates, the shape of a story without the voice that told it. I wanted to know where I came from. Truly know. I do not want my children to inherit a shape.

So this is the thing I wanted and could not find. Not a place to store photographs. A way to ask the people I love the questions I have been meaning to ask, and to keep the answers in their own voices, for the people who come after us.

Photographs
A young woman in a pale sweater, photographed in the 1940s. The print is creased, marked and browning at the edges.
Two boys in striped shirts beside a flowering bush on a summer step. JULY 1957 is printed on the border, and a hand holds the corner of the print.
July 1957
A man in a yellow work shirt eating at a laid table — good china, a patterned cloth, a bowl held in one hand.
An older woman holding two small children close, her eyes shut. Black and white.
2008
Two adults swinging a child between them by the arms, a girl in a white dress reaching for him. Black and white, outdoors.
2017
Three children in pyjamas on a striped bed, tangled together, looking up. Black and white.
December 2018
A boy and a young woman leaning into one milkshake at a diner table. Black and white.
2020
A woman in a wool cap and a boy, cheek to cheek, both looking straight at the camera. Black and white.
2020
Four children in a circle seen from below, heads together against the sky.
October 2022
A family of five holding hands in a line along a lake shore, mountains behind them.
November 2022
A woman in a cap between two children, all three smiling, autumn leaves behind.
A couple standing close together, a castle ruin and the sea behind them.
October 2025
The map

The same chart the product draws, pointed at the family it was built for. This is what a map looks like once it has four generations in it.

Walter JamesAnna JosephineCorkCharles EdwardMargaret Anne1935 · Portsmouth, VirginiaEleanor Ruth1961 · Pittsburgh · you are hereSusannah1989Merrit1993Ansel1996Junie2001

The names on this chart are illustrative. The founder’s own map includes children who are still young, and whether a living child is named on a public page is their parent’s decision to make, not a default to inherit.

If any of this is familiar — the conversation you keep meaning to have, the person you keep meaning to ask — that is who it is for.

Become a lightkeeperRead Our Why