I’ve become fascinated with a PBS program called Finding Your Roots, where Henry Louis Gates Jr. helps celebrities better understand themselves through discovery of their family histories and ancestral origins. The outcome of this process often leads to emotions such as enlightenment, healing, calm, inspiration and grounding to name a few.
Exploring our family history is an excellent way to get to know ourselves better and to achieve a larger sense of belonging to a particular tribe. All we need is a bit of curiosity. There are many payoffs:
Gain a stronger sense of identity: most folks have a deep-seated need to know what makes them who they are and who they take after. According to Carol McCoy, Ph.D., president of find-your-roots.com, our social cultural and genetic heritage can shed light on our character, health, relationships, even the meaning of our name; and we can learn the skills, talents, business background and mysteries of our family.
Connecting with family members: for people who grew up as an only child or who lost a parent early on, finding new relatives can be priceless–providing a sense of belonging with people that share our genetics; learning what exactly is our genealogical makeup; preserving our family history so it can be shared and passed on to others; create a treasured family heirloom that will bring our family closer together; and discover family photos, articles, and other family treasures..
Bring history to life: historical events may just seem like dry facts and dates before learning the role our ancestors played in them says McCoy; helps us appreciate the struggles our ancestors faced, yet here we are!
Personal story: Admittedly, I had not done a lot with Dad’s notebook (a collection of pieces of our family’s genealogical information) since his passing–guess it’s a timing deal. However, during a recent European trip, I was able to connect with a distant cousin, Holger Hillesheim, from Germany who had written my Great Uncle Frank back in the 80’s. Even though the phone number no longer worked, with the wonders of technology, we GPS’d his address and found him!
There were many serendipitous parts to this journey beside finding Holger. We were able to locate a total of three Hillesheim villages, one a housing area, one a bit larger with a castle ruins and one with 5 wineries near the Mosel River. However, Holger lives in a city called Sandhausen where we understood many of our family originated–and the Badan region as well.
Holger had very recently relocated to this address where his father lived to help him with his early dementia challenges and, get this–he had brought our family coat of arms only two days prior to our visit. We learned Holger, who is about our age, is a historian (what better relative to uncover) and knew English quite well due to over 20 visits to the US while working on his documentary titled “Hilter’s Warriors”. And here I write a column titled “Wellness Warriors”–what are the odds, right?
Since then, we have been able to communicate quite regularly via email and he surprisingly put together a document titled: “A short Hillesheim-family tale–From Sandhausen (Germany) to Wisconsin” to share with my Southwestern Wisconsin family. He writes: “Probably we are really distant cousins–more than 200 years ago our ancestors were brothers.” What a hoot–right?
If I were to describe what this has all meant to me at this stage of my life it would be huge gratitude for these and future family pieces coming together, even greater respect to those that came before and made their way toward a better life here is the US of A; and a significant feeling of grounding.
Other than travel back to the motherland, we have many geneolocal searching options at our disposal these days–from DNA tests, to internet ancestral research sites, to hiring research assistance.
Bottom line:
We are all unique and come from very ethnically diverse DNA
We are all immigrants and survivors of this human journey
We are all one and we are all in this together
We are better grounded and nourished through an understanding of our roots.
Onward Warriors!