# 13 questions to ask your adoptive parent about faith and beliefs

Belief, practice, what changed and what caused it. The rule they lived by, in their own words, may be the book's epigraph. Ask "tell me about the day you found out about me" as a scene, not a feeling. Start with where they were standing when the phone rang.

1. What did you believe about God as a child, and what do you believe now?
2. What rule did you live by that you never said out loud?
   Ask for it in their words. That sentence may be the book's epigraph.
3. What did your parents teach you that you kept, and what did you throw out?
4. What did Sunday, or the Sabbath, look like in your house growing up? Who insisted, and who slipped out?
5. Was there a minister, rabbi, priest or teacher who actually mattered to you? What did they say?
6. Did you ever stop going, or start again? What happened?
   A belief that changed is a chapter. A belief that never did is a sentence.
7. What did you teach your children to believe, and did it take?
8. Is there a prayer, a hymn or a verse you still know by heart? Say it.
9. Who said grace, or made the toast, and what did they always say?
   Verbatim. The toast is a line of family liturgy.
10. Was there a moment your faith was tested? (tender: ask once, late, in person)
11. What do you pray for, or hope for, when it's late and nobody is listening? (tender: ask once, late, in person)
12. What do you think happens after? Has that answer changed? (tender: ask once, late, in person)
13. Was there a death, a birth or an illness that changed what you believe? (tender: ask once, late, in person)

## How to use these questions

Ask by voice, not by form. Record it. One or two questions a visit is enough; the follow-up ("who else was there?", "what did she say?", "what happened the day after?") matters more than the next question on the list. Tender questions are marked; ask them once, late, and with "or would you rather leave that?" in the question itself.

## About Tellforth

Tellforth asks questions like these by voice, remembers every answer, asks the next question a good listener would, and writes a finished book from what was said: a memoir in the person's own words, or a novel built on the true story. You own every recording. https://tellforth.com