From our family
to yours
The smallest moments matter the most
A LETTER FROM THE FOUNDERS
We are three brothers from California who grew up valuing family above everything else. We were lucky to have close relationships with our parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and eventually one another's partners and children too.
But we also grew up with distance.
We lived out West while most of our extended family lived back East. Over the years, we often talked about how we wished we lived closer to our grandparents growing up. Close enough for drop-in dinners, ordinary moments, and all the small things that quietly shape a family over time.
Now, Ben has three boys of his own — Finley, Otis, and Rhys. We learned this year that both Nate and Pierce were expecting newborns of their own. Suddenly, the conversations we'd spent years having about family felt even more important. We found ourselves thinking about cousins growing up together, grandparents nearby, family dinners, traditions, stories, and the kind of closeness we hope our children can carry into adulthood.
Around the same time, Nate's work in palliative medicine began shaping these conversations in a deeper way. As a physician, he spends his days helping families navigate some of the most meaningful and vulnerable moments together.
Again and again, he witnessed how deeply people want to be connected with the people they love. Families want stories shared. Children want to spend quality time. Grandchildren want to ask questions, but often don't know how. Grandparents want to pass down their own values and life lessons.
"It's such an important service to be able to provide to individuals and families — and something I wish we had done more of with our own grandparents."— NATE
Stories have a way of fading. At first it's small things: a phrase someone always used, the way your grandfather hummed while making breakfast, the story behind a family recipe. It's those tiny details that somehow become the things you miss most.
And when those details disappear, something larger disappears with them. Not just memories, but context. Traditions. Values. The feeling of who someone truly was, and how deeply they were loved by the people around them.
Three generations on each side. The kind of photographs every family hopes to keep.
That became the beginning of Recollective. A way for families to come together and tell stories collaboratively. A way for children, siblings, cousins, grandparents, and lifelong friends to contribute memories in their own voices. A process that feels less like documenting history, and more like sitting around a table remembering together.
Stories remind people where they come from. Who shaped them. What mattered. We believe that should never quietly disappear.
The book itself matters deeply to us. A physical reminder families can hold onto for decades. We've come to believe the real magic is the process of creating it together.
We hope families use Recollective as a reason to reconnect. To deepen relationships that already exist. To ask the questions that are easy to postpone, until suddenly they aren't.
Years from now, if a child pulls one of these books from a shelf and reads a story about their great-grandmother, they will feel a little more connected to the people who came before them.
Family stories should live forever. Recollective can help you tell yours.
— Ben, Nate & Pierce Coggins
Start telling your family story
Today can become the start of something your family treasures for generations.
Share the small moments that helped shape your family.