Heal at the Root

One of my favorite idioms is "the body remembers." I say it all the time. But what if I said it goes beyond the body? Our souls remember. Healing goes beyond our own trauma. Many series of events led to our place on this earth and the circumstances of which we were brought up. To truly heal, you need to heal at the root.

Why looking backward can help us move forward

Ancestry is more than names and dates. It is stories. You will be proud of some, ashamed of others. Then there are some that require you to read between many, many lines, maybe even do some research on the history of that region.

I love solving puzzles and looking at the big picture. Many things started to make more sense the more I dug. On social media, friends and followers began noticing my flair for finding the stories in the flurry of names and dates. People who never thought about genealogy are now thinking about getting into it.

Finding Stories

A couple friends wanted to learn more. They felt the calling. I was able to help them get started, equipping them with tips and tricks, tracing their line to either the immigrating generation or a brick wall (in the case for my Native American friend). Friends started learning things about themselves, too just off of their ancestors' stories!

Noticing Patterns

Having descended from both the highest of society colonial Americans as well as fleeing immigrants during times of political unrest I have learned that we as human beings aren't that different at the end of the day. Our ancestors carried trauma in the name of survival, or their version of it.

From teenagers marrying men nearly twice their age to preserve old blood loyalty to hiding in communes for cultural survival the stories come to life. Missing or vague documents inferring shame or fleeing the German Empire for your son to be shot and killed by Nazi gunfire in World War II are things that show us why history is so important to learn.

The spiritual layer

For me, ancestral work is not just research; it is ritual. I’ve sifted through West Prussian (now Pomerania, Poland) and on GenBaza, found Belgian parish registers, tracked Colonial New England dissenters, and pieced together fragmented records. I also harvest dirt from graves, adding it to my altar.

They talk to me. It is like a radio and fragments "come out", usually in phrases of up to a few words at once. I have spent hours digging through microfilm to find a census or baptismal record only for a voice to tell me where to look and lo and behold it pops up. If only they would tell me BEFORE I delve hours into looking for a single record!

But sometimes they offer other information, too.

Healing through connection

Genealogy is not only about discovering who we come from, but what we can heal. I won't sugarcoat shady things ancestors did. (My stomach churned when I found an ancestor in the slave trade.) I do not believe in silence or hiding secrets, even if I'm not proud of it. I live my truth, and theirs, too. I'm proud to have come from people who broke some social norms unapologetically — women who ran taverns after their husbands passed, Baptists who refused to convert to Puritanism, folk Lutherans who were practicing the Old Ways despite appearing assimilated on paper. But for the not so nice things that happened? I want to heal all of that.

Each name in the tree is more than a record — it’s a reminder that these people and historical events were real and that we are never alone.