"I submitted a memory and it vanished"

Try this first

1. Don't resubmit — the memory arrived. New contributions land in a pending state, visible to the archive's steward but not yet published.
2. If you're a contributor, give the family a little time; someone reviews new memories personally, and "personally" sometimes means "after work on Thursday."
3. If you run the archive, check your review area — the missing memory is almost certainly sitting there waiting for you.
4. If a question came back instead of a published memory, that's the needs-clarification state: the steward wants a detail ("which uncle?" "roughly what year?") before it goes in. Just answer it.

What's going on

Every archive has an approval setting: review everything, publish trusted people automatically, or publish everything as it comes. Whatever the setting, a submission that isn't visible yet is pending — held, safe, and awaiting a human. Two kinds of submissions are always reviewed no matter the setting: anything from a child contributor, and anything touching a sensitive topic.

A memory can also be set aside — kept in the archive but deliberately not displayed. That's a curation choice, not a deletion; set-aside memories still exist and can be brought back. Nothing a family member contributes is ever silently thrown away.

If that didn't work

If a memory truly isn't in the review queue and the contributor is sure it was sent, write to [email protected] with roughly when it was submitted and by whom, and we'll go looking.