Iowa
Iowa is a place of farms, river towns and neighbors who still wave from the pickup. The life you have lived here, and what you think about it now, belongs in your own words.
Try it free for 7 days. Only you can see your record. Never public or searchable.
When you check the sky first thing in the morning, what are you looking for?
Iowa lives have long been organized around chores, weather and markets, and the good years and lean ones leave their marks on how a person thinks, so ToldForward gives that thinking a place to land. One question arrives each day, and you answer in your own words. Your record stays private while you live, and you name who receives it.
A few minutes at a time, whenever it suits you.
A friendly question about your life, your views or the people in it. Skip any you like.
Come back to an answer, add to it, or change it. Each one keeps its date.
Name the family and/or friends who will one day receive your whole record.
Iowa
Iowa is the nation's top producer of pork, corn and eggs, which means a great many Iowa lives have been organized around chores, weather and markets. Even if you never farmed, you probably know someone who checks the sky before anything else in the morning. What did that kind of work teach you, or teach the people around you? Stories about early alarms, long harvests and the good years and lean ones are part of what makes this state what it is.
In the Upper Mississippi River Valley, Effigy Mounds National Monument protects earthen mounds built in the shapes of animals, including a line of bears known as the Marching Bear Mound Group. They are a quiet reminder that people have been making meaning on this land for a very long time. Your own place in that long line is smaller and more personal, and just as real. What does this land mean to you, and how would you describe it to someone who has never seen it?
Iowa entered the Union on December 28, 1846, as the 29th state. Since then, towns have grown, shrunk and changed, and new schools, new highways and new arrivals have reshaped the map many times over. If you have watched your own town change, you hold a piece of history that will not appear in any record unless you tell it. Which places have changed, which ones stayed the same, and what do you hope the generations after you will understand about where they came from?
The guide
With Archive Membership, the people you name can ask a guide about your life. It answers only with your own words, quoted and dated, and says plainly when your record holds no answer.
Your words, exactly
Quotes come straight from your record, never rewritten by AI.
Clearly an AI
The guide always says it is an AI, and speaks about you, not as you.
Honest when unsure
When nothing you wrote answers a question, it says so.
In your own voice, on the page
Your phrasing, your humour, your way of putting things, kept word for word.
Dated as you go
Every answer carries its date, so the way your thinking changes is part of the story.
Handed on with care
The people you choose receive it after at least 6 months, never sooner.
Text only, on purpose
No recordings and no images of you are ever made or kept.
ToldForward asks you one friendly question a day about your life and your opinions, and you reply in your own words by typing or with your device's own dictation. It all stays private while you live, and you name the people who will one day receive it.